


Carpe Noctem

by spunknbite



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection, Gender fluid!Everyone, Gratuitous descriptions of Crowley's body, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, Thirsty!Aziraphale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-09-06 10:18:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20289841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spunknbite/pseuds/spunknbite
Summary: Temptation was woven into Crowley stitch by stitch like a fine brocade; once, before the schism, before Heaven and Hell were even places, a seamstress had threaded temptation through him, laceddesire and need and want and lust and lovethrough his very core like She filled all her creations with various intrinsic properties. Larks can’t choose not to sing, and so too Crowley can’t choose not to sway his hips like that and lick his mouth with a tongue that seemed purposefully designed to instill sinful thoughts, and - dear God - tilt his head to the side and look at Aziraphale with those inviting, suggestive eyes that always seem to to saycome home with me, angel, take my hand and let’s Fall together.Vignettes from 6000 years of pining, as told by Aziraphale.





	1. London, 2019 AD

_ Prompt: Aziraphale accidentally summons Crowley _

Slender fingers strum against his cheek, run down his neck, remove his tie. Pianist fingers. _ Play me. _ Dexterous and deft. A hiss of something in his ear, fingers slip under his shirt and tune his collarbone, his jugular. Aziraphale’s gasps are minor chords. God, the man’s _ hands_...

It’s a lovely thing to think about, alone at his desk, the last of his evening reading completed, the street beyond him dark, the shop illuminated only by lamplight peeking through the curtains - what Crowley would do if he was here, what Crowley would do _ to him _ if he was here_. _

These thoughts - so long held, so far-fetched until the world didn’t end - always seemed, well, not _ innocent _ exactly, but certainly harmless enough. It was an absurd fantasy, something that could never come to pass; their opposing sides wouldn’t allow it, Aziraphale wouldn’t allow it (_my lot do not send rude notes_, Crowley had once said, and with that Aziraphale banished the notion, the outside chance, that maybe someday, sometime - no, best not to speculate). In that impossibility was freedom for idle nighttime reveries.

Now though, with no Heaven or Hell between them, it seems reckless, real, _ possible _ in a way that almost makes Aziraphale retract his hand from his fly. Almost.

Button by button, those clever fingers would strip away his waistcoat, button-down, trousers, until he’s bare and vulnerable and Crowley’s artist fingers brush him, the pads of his thumbs, so smooth, sketch his chest and nipples, tracing him, _ mapping _ him, like this is fleeting and he’s being committed to memory. Like he’s being outlined for a later painting. Artist fingers paint his sides with feathered brushstrokes. He’s Crowley’s canvas, and Crowley is thorough, washing the gesso of his thighs with delicate sweeps of his fingers, parting them so his hands cup and cover the whole of him. A base coat.

It had been like this always. A flirtatious smile on the wall of Eden that burned Aziraphale in a way he hadn’t known was possible; it set fire to his chest and hands and cheeks, made him _ desire _ to see more of that smile, not just occasionally but upon waking every morning from sleep he didn’t need or even want, but seemed quite wonderful if it meant opening his eyes to a smile so genuine that it made Aziraphale doubt, if only briefly, the divide between Heaven and Hell.

Temptation was woven into Crowley stitch by stitch like a fine brocade; once, before the schism, before Heaven and Hell were even places, a seamstress had threaded temptation through him, laced _desire and need and want and lust and love _through his very core like She filled all her creations with various intrinsic properties. Larks can’t choose not to sing, and so too Crowley can’t choose not to sway his hips like that and lick his mouth with a tongue that seemed purposefully designed to instill sinful thoughts, and - dear God - tilt his head to the side and look at Aziraphale with those inviting, suggestive eyes that always seem to to say _come home with me, angel, take my hand and let’s Fall together._

Such covetousness was quite unbecoming of an angel. Angels weren’t supposed to desire _ anything_, let alone demons. But Aziraphale wanted and wanted; it was inherent to him, God given. Crowley tempts and Aziraphale is tempted, as it had been for millennia.

After the wall, after scores of happenstance meetings and then planned, clandestine activities that left Aziraphale simultaneously elated and repentant, he’d come to accept the _ ache _ that accompanied Crowley’s company.

And _ how _ Aziraphale aches for him, for his da Vinci hands; long and regal and fine, something sketched by a master centuries ago. Those _ divine _ fingertips would stroke the sensitive juncture between his inner thigh and groin, and devil-lips would curve into a smile as Aziraphale beseeches _ make me your masterpiece, pour yourself into me_, and Crowley is obliging, always in his reveries, taking Aziraphale in hand, drawing out cries, drawing out invocations to a God that would condemn this, if any of it was real.

Aziraphale’s own hands are clumsy in comparison: blunt and short-fingered, _ working hands _ they would have been called, centuries ago, had they ever seen dirt or gone without a manicure. Yet, he can imagine them as agile and poetic, crafting symphonies and opuses with each manipulation; he can close his eyes and envision Crowley there, golden eyes afire, a hiss of _ you need thisss, angel? _ And Aziraphale’s hand hastens and he prays, “Crowley.”

“Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale reels, exposed, and there is Crowley, _actually_ _Crowley_, standing before him, plant mister in hand, eyes fixed on Aziraphale’s now still hand. Silence is rendered loud for too many seconds, and then finally:

“Need a hand, angel?” A quaver in Crowley’s usually sure voice, the dropped pitch, an exaggerated bravado of a not-so-natural swagger, an overt easiness that was anything but.

“Certainly not. Is the door not working tonight?” Aziraphale wants to melt into his chair as he struggles with his fly.

“You summoned me here. I was watering my plants.” Crowley shakes the mister for emphasis.

“I didn’t intend - ”

“No, I expect not.”

This is how he’ll discorporate, Aziraphale’s certain. He can’t meet Crowley’s eyes, and why on Earth has he dropped his plant mister, and was coming towards him, why can’t he just leave him to his shame in peace instead of gloating? Because Crowley _ baits_, Aziraphale knows. He can’t be baited right now.

“I heard what you said.” _ Dear God, please strike me down here _. “So, do you want a hand?”

Crowley kneels down between his legs, eyes searching Aziraphale’s with unexpected sincerity. The demon’s face is an infernal red, lips made for sin flushed ruby and wet.

“Please, don’t tease me.”

“I wouldn’t. Not about this. No teasing tonight, me.” When did his legs start shaking? And Crowley’s palm is suddenly squeezing his calf, anchoring him. “Let me give you a hand, angel?”

Crowley’s palm is warm, his fingers beautifully slim and delicate while wrapped around his leg, and somehow still steadying, bracing. He thumbs the front of Aziraphale’s knee, stroking it almost absentmindedly, almost casually, almost as if he’d thought of doing it before. And Aziraphale is boneless under this seemingly inconsequential touch. Heaven help him, he manages a nod.

Aziraphale bites back a cry as Crowley pulls him back out of his trousers, soft now. He has sculptor fingers, moulding him hard with ease, carving his supple flesh solid with languid strokes. His fingers fit him so perfectly, so tangible and here and now, so much longer than Aziraphale’s own, and they wrap around him, enveloping the girth of his cock with every gentle _ up and down_. How can he possibly know to touch him like this? Like he knows every crevice, every dip in his body, every sensitive spot to caress. Like he’s done this a thousand times. Practiced ease; the touch of a lover.

“I think about you, too. Have since the start.” Aziraphale’s hips buck and he digs his nails into the armrests of his desk chair.

Crowley rubs the head with his thumb, spreads Aziraphale’s precum across the flare, like a sculptor watering dried clay, making it more malleable, and Aziraphale leans into him, breath coming out in short, shallow pants. He watches Crowley’s beautiful hands: hands that once sculpted stars from nothing but atoms, that drew them together in clusters and constellations, hands that once created some of the most beautiful plants in Eden, that painted individual hydrangea petals until the colours were blended just so, those hands now wrapped around his flesh.

“You can hold onto me, if you’d like.” And something in Aziraphale _ breaks _just a little, and he’s clinging to Crowley’s shoulders instead of the armrests, his face pillowed in Crowley’s hair, angled so that he could still watch his lovely hands work him. A soft hiss and, “Would you mind if I touched myself too?”

And it’s too much. Millennia of watching Crowley and _ wanting _ him, centuries and centuries of desperation and fantasies, of excusing himself every time the man deigned to sit at a piano or pick up a paintbrush, the visual of Crowley between his thighs, simultaneously stroking him and himself, is the last of what Aziraphale could bear. He moans into the soft tresses of red hair and thrusts up, Crowley’s adept fingers slipping over his slit, pressing down with just the right amount of pressure, until Aziraphale is spilling over his hand, white-hot pleasure peaked by the continuous strokes of Crowley’s otherworldly fingers. It’s artistry, Aziraphale thinks; it’s what a painting must feel like when being painted, what a sculpture feels like when it’s finally taken shape; relief and ecstasy and _ creation_.

It’s some time before he can think again, and only then does Aziraphale nudge Crowley, who’s lounging his head on Aziraphale’s thigh and smiling up at him with eyes so soft they couldn’t belong to a demon, retired or not. _ Bedroom eyes. _ He tugs Crowley up onto his lap so and he straddles him over his desk chair. “My dear, I’d very much appreciate it if I could watch you now.”

Crowley grins, unzipping his fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk to me on [Tumblr](https://spunknbite.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spunknbite).


	2. Olympia, 708 BC

_ Prompt: pining!Aziraphale in the bath _

He’d grown quite bored with the athletes, Aziraphale feared. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the sport of it _ in theory_, or the effort that went into preparing for it - the athletes trekked about the fields incessantly, running and lifting and bending various metal bars and pulling loaded carts, and just generally doing activities that frankly looked exhausting and absolutely no fun at all - and Aziraphale reminded himself about _ something, something, Panhellenism, something, something, cultural importance, something, something, enduring legacy. _ It was all very tedious. He popped a grape into his mouth and reclined in the hot bath, ignoring the grunts of the nearby wrestlers. Beastly sport to be included in this year’s games.

A familiar swing of the hips caught his eye, a flash of naked flesh - that was nothing out of the ordinary; the athletes insisted on being naked all the time, which Aziraphale didn’t personally see the appeal of when there were fine linens and smooth silks to drape across the body - but this flesh was splendidly freckled, constellations mapped in specks on thighs and forearms, lithe legs impossibly long, and there was the Serpent of Eden, quite human, quite naked, hips lilting back and forth, giving a _truly_ _lovely _bounce to his…

Well. There should be none of that. Aziraphale sank further into the bath and let Crawley continue alone.

Sometime later, when he emerged from the hot water and walked across the field of the gymnasium, passing yet another pair of wrestlers, he forced from his mind the image of an oiled Crawley pinned beneath him, bodies slick together in a kind of intimacy Aziraphale had never allowed himself to contemplate before. Crawley would bend his dappled knee up, let Aziraphale settle between his legs. Something no wrestler would permit. An eyebrow quirked, a smile dripping intoxication, a challenge raised - _ pin me again, angel? _ \- a voice that could knock Aziraphale back, but doesn’t because a freckled hand is urging him down, sun-kissed fingers threading through cropped blonde hair. _ Pin me again. I’ll let you win. _

Beastly sport.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk to me on [Tumblr](https://spunknbite.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spunknbite).


	3. North Yorkshire, 695 AD

_ Prompt: historical rescue _

The North Sea was frigid, even in the heat of the summer, and Aziraphale had greatly misjudged not only the temperature but the current.

He’d be relegated to desk duty, he thought, desperately trying to keep his head above the tide that took him further from the rocky shore, and desk duty terrified him more than the prospect of drowning; he’d never see Crowley again. The icy water clung to his thin tunic and pulled his mouth under the depths, and Aziraphale spluttered, tried to miracle himself out for the third time, but his body was rigid, numb, iced over, his limbs locked; his miracles frozen in his fingertips. It had happened so quickly, and now he was submerged in a still blackness, the water underneath the surface so calm despite the choppy torrent above, and Aziraphale thought that this was something like what the universe must have been prior to creation: an empty pit, nothing, loneliness rendered tangible, all-encompassing.

He gasped for breath he was certain he didn’t actually require, but his human vessel struggled for anyhow. The drowning part of it _ hurt_. He choked as water filled his lungs, _ burning _ in a way that cold things shouldn’t. _ Hellfire_, he thought as his vision blurred.

And then someone - not someone, _ Crowley_, he was sure before he saw him from the shape of his hands, the contour of his forearms - had him around the middle and was pulling him up, or what he assumed was up because he’d lost all sense in the void under the surface, and then he was gagging up water on the rocks, an inhumanly warm body pressed behind him, urging water from his chest. The world came into focus and Aziraphale inhaled wildly between convulsions of vomited seawater.

“ - a fucking moron. What in Satan’s name were you thinking?” He couldn’t answer, his throat tight with brine. “You could have been discorporated.” Crowley’s hand hit his back, hard, and he spewed. “And then who’d I have to save on weekends? Whatever would I get up to on Friday nights if I didn’t have your sorry arse to chase after?” Aziraphale leaned back into Crowley’s hand, splayed fingers rubbing circles into his skin, lingering. He coughed up more water. “Didn’t know nuns went spelunking.”

Aziraphale’s habit and veil lay dry on the rocks where he’d left them.

More water came up. “Abbey’s hot. Bath’s not until Monday. Needed to,” he dry heaved, “cool down.”

“In the North Sea?”

“I was mistaken.” Tears and snot were running down his face, and suddenly Crowley wasn’t behind him, but in front, wiping his face with a water-logged cloth.

“You’re fetching, angel,” he drawled.

Aziraphale wanted to say something, anything, to thank him, and ask just _ how _ he’d known to come, _ why _was he in this area anyway, but he couldn’t form the words; he could barely form the thoughts. He gagged again, and Crowley wiped his chin.

Crowley was running his fingers through his sodden blonde hair, matted and salty, sticking to his neck and shoulders. “I imagine you do make a fetching nun. Lovely hair.” He was needling, Aziraphale was sure, but still his fingers, lithe and light, felt wonderful running down his scalp, teasing his tangled hair apart with a gossamer-tenderness that was not altogether unexpected. He stroked his temple, parting Aziraphale’s hair with dove-like touches, and followed the part around methodically, caressing his crown with every brush of his fingers.

Aziraphale was suddenly very aware of his sheer tunic, made transparent in the water, cleaving to his naked breasts and cold-pert nipples, failing to conceal his blonde mound between his legs. He was also very aware of Crowley’s shirtless chest, the soft whirls of red hair damp across his pectorals, and the elegant way the seawater plastered his curls to his forehead. He looked heroic. Chivalric almost.

Now with his breathing even again and the threat of discorporation passed, and Crowley so very close, so very nude, Aziraphale knew not all of the wetness between his legs was seawater. He shifted, pressing his thighs together, willing himself to ignore a burgeoning ache.

He should miracle himself dry. He should miracle himself his clothing. He should do a lot of things. But Crowley was still combing his hair, and his other hand had strayed to Aziraphale’s leg, resting there as if this casual touch wasn’t rippling up Aziraphale’s spine. Violent eddies, pulling him beneath the surface again.

_ This _ was drowning, Aziraphale thought. _ This _was what it felt like to be truly dragged under, to be out of control and subject to the whims of a stronger current than he was capable, or even willing, to fight.

Ablution, a salt water baptism down the cliff from a Benedictine abbey. Aziraphale shivered, and Crowley snapped his fingers. “Let’s get you dressed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk to me on [Tumblr](https://spunknbite.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spunknbite).


	4. A field outside Camelot, 539 AD

_ Prompt: Camelot _

The joust was about to begin when Aziraphale spotted him - her, he supposed - across the arena. Poised in the front row of the raised spectators’ benches, the cushioned ones meant for the court, no less; she was leaning over the ledge, whispering something into the ear of one of the knights - Lancelot du Lac - lips fire-laden, treacherous, smeared with sin. But good Lord - for a Delilah, she was still a sacrosanct painting, a portrait taken from the centre panel of a cathedral’s finest triptych. Thick, fire-red curls spilled over her shoulders and poured down her back in intricate braids bound first to her temple like a halo. Radiant in the true sense, a flame-hot beacon in red amongst the dreary blues and greys of the overcast morning light. The women around her glittered in various jewels and gems, but Crowley was singular, awash in an inner (likely infernal, Aziraphale thought with reticence) glow that outshone all the finery in Camelot, that made sapphires and rubies and gold seem false, apocryphal, and Aziraphale was up and across the stands, ceremony quite forgotten. _ Moth to a flame. _

Lancelot was nodding as Crowley’s lips moved almost imperceptibly, spinning a story, a tale, a temptation, fibres to thread. _ Tell me a story, something I haven’t heard before _ , Aziraphale had said to her before, and would say again millennia later, whispered in quiet moments far from court and humans and _ work_. And Crowley would lean into him, irredeemable lips and tongue fabricating thick wool out of the barest of fibres. 

Crowley spotted him approaching, yellow eyes mooned into a crescent, a greeting, and then with a flourish, she produced a dagger from somewhere in her dress and sliced through a thin lock of crimson hair. Jousts, sword fights, they were war games, men playing at battle in peacetime; harmless really, with only stray blood-red hairs spoiling the ground, dripping from lily-white hands as Crowley passed Lancelot the lock.

“A token for today. For luck.”

“My Lady.” Lancelot bowed, respectful, distanced upon Aziraphale’s interruption, and he readied his horse. “Sir Aziraphale.” A nod, a courtesy, and he was off down the field.

“My Lady?” Aziraphale bowed, just a little, just enough to not draw suspicion, and Crowley grinned, caught red-handed, _ shameless. _ “I thought you were off fermenting somewhere else?” 

“Good Sir Angel!” An unnecessary curtsy with too much ado. “I can do that right here, it turns out.” She patted the bench next to her. “Fuck convention, am I right?” And Aziraphale sat down, despite himself. Always despite himself. “Are you jousting?”

“No, I find it a bit needless, honestly. Dangerous for the horses.” He edged away from Crowley’s inviting hand still caressing the bench between them.

“And hard on the buttocks, I imagine.”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t find them uncomfortable? Horses.”

“I suppose so, yes. Still would rather avoid them being impaled on sharp pointy things though.”

“The sword, then? You’re fighting in that?”

“I had no plans to. Didn’t know there’d be a damsel worth impressing here.” It was meant as a joke, but the look that struck Crowley’s face - something between surprise and trepidation - told him it didn’t land.

“Pity.” Defences back up, easy smile on her lips again. “I’d have given you a lock. Only gave one to Lance over there to get him to leave. Terribly boring, that one.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“Probably. Hell wants this place wiped out.”

“What? Why? It’s the only proper port of civilization across Europe.”

“Bit anachronistic, isn’t it? Europe won’t see this sort of organization for several centuries if Hell gets its way. Wipe it all out and start anew. Won’t even be remembered as fact if all goes to plan.”

“The Fall of Rome all over again.” He bit his lip and looked at Crowley. “And you’re helping with all this?”

Her face softened, a sad smile, like a _ Madonna and Child _ painting of the next millennia; cracked tempera lips, heart-sore eyes gazing at a baby she’ll outlive, knowing all this because the painter knew the outcome and thus the _ Madonna _of the painting knows the outcome. Foreknowledge is dangerous. “I don’t have other options, angel.”

Aziraphale looked out at the arena, to the embroidered banners and the horses’ bridles and the food vendors and the roads leading in from the city. Roads dug into the dirt, ploughed by horses, laid with stones quarried not far from here. He looked at the people, rich and poor alike, all fed, all cared for as much as the Dark Ages allowed. There weren’t any other cities like this. Where would he go?

“Is it all in place?”

“More or less.”

“Nothing to be done then?”

“I didn’t know you liked it here.” And then, “I’m sorry, angel.”

She took his hand, held it in hers. Held it like _ Madonna _ clutched her child, like the disciples clutched the hull and mast on _ The Storm on the Sea of Galilee_, like they would millennia later in a garden in London. It would be a scandal, this handholding, but Aziraphale supposed there would be little left to scandalize before long. And he closed his eyes and wondered why in God’s name he was here at all if not to hold her hand.

Crowley pulled away, took a braided lock from over her shoulder, a thick one with gold ribbon threaded through it, and twirled it idly about a slim finger before slicing it clean through with the dagger.

“A token,” she said, placing it in Aziraphale’s empty, tingling hand.

And some thousand years later, when the Great Fire of London torched the city and Aziraphale ran home after failing to keep St. Paul’s standing, only to find his house nothing but ashes and smouldering black timber, it was the lock of Crowley’s hair he cried for. Not Aristotle’s second book of _ Poetics, _ or the signed Pliny, or the _ Annals of King David_, the Bede, the lost Boccaccio, the Copernicus, not the scores of Shakespeare first editions or _ Love’s Labour’s Won_, it was a braid as silken as the day it was cut that left him weeping.

But that was centuries distant, and now Aziraphale simply slipped it in his pocket, fingers lingering against the soft tresses, memorizing each strand the texture of materials not yet produced in England. Velvet. Muslin. Chiffon. 

“Don’t have much hair to gift you, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps something else then.” A quirk of Crowley’s lips. “Lunch after the joust, your treat?”

And even in the yet-to-be wreckage of a burgeoning Empire, amidst what would soon be smoke and discord and civil war, lunch with Crowley sounded nice. 

“Yes, quite.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk to me on [Tumblr](https://spunknbite.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spunknbite).


	5. South Downs, 2021 AD

_ Prompt: overstimulation_

He was teeming with Crowley, brimming of him. A tempest upon a bereft dam; Aziraphale _ overflowed_.

Crowley was a storm on the sea. He was waves that buffeted the shore, unrelenting and pitiless,_ a force of nature,_ and Aziraphale could only ride him out, powerless and drenched and crying - crying for a break in the rain or for another downpour to consume him or for whatever Crowley would give him - he had no idea anymore. 

And he was loose, so loose that the emptiness itself ached in his quim, wanting to be filled, wanting a torrent, a plug, something to keep the _ shame _of it from spilling out of him. His thighs were slippery, storm-soaked, and Crowley spread them apart yet again, urging him onto his hands and knees. “You can do this,” he breathed, steadying Aziraphale who struggled to hold himself up - he couldn’t - and he collapsed on his arms, bum in the air, thighs parted, quivering as liquid - his, Crowley’s, both - streamed down his legs and onto the sheets below. “You can give me one more, can’t you?”

He had nothing more to give. It had all poured out of him. His thighs were coated in it, the bed saturated with it, Crowley’s fingers and mouth and cock slick with it. He mewled a response, nonsensical, but Crowley hadn’t waited, lips already sucking the cloudburst that covered his legs, the debris after the storm, sopping his humiliation like honey and not the storm-ravaged detritus Aziraphale felt sure it was.

“You’re a miracle like this.” He felt anything but. Split open, like a half-eaten peach, juices everywhere. He could feel the cool air against his spread cunt, fucked open and wanton, and that alone was too much; the flower-laden breeze from their bedroom window struck him like a gale, and he convulsed, _ gaping_. His flesh was raw from Crowley’s attention, from hours of hands against him, inside him, a tongue so sharp with words but soft against his clit, a cock _ in and out and in and out_, kneading that spot that made Aziraphale shudder and sob that he was going to cum again, and again, and again until he was certain it wasn’t possible another time, or ever again. He was used up.

“I can’t,” he could scarcely form the words; they stuck in his throat. He shook with need for relief from the deluge, whatever that relief may be, and Crowley’s mouth was edging still nearer to his centre, licking the fresh cum off his inner thighs, hands coaxing them further apart. 

“You can. One more, angel.”

Crowley’s tongue reached the soft juncture between his plump lips and his thighs and he licked between it, sucking the dewy flesh. 

“Aziraphale, you’re actually _ dripping._” 

And, oh God, he was. A soft splatter muted on already sodden sheets, and more trickled out, viscous strands of cum leaking out of him in thick rivulets. Debauched, despoiled, monsooned. He _ should _ be ashamed; he _ was _ ashamed, but Crowley’s hands on him were anchors, mooring him.

An inhale behind him, a breath of “Fuck,” and Crowley’s mouth was on him, sucking his swollen labia between his lips, catching him mid drip.

He cried out, wordless, soundless, hoarse gasps dying in his mouth. Crowley had drained him, wrung every sob and cry from his body, and left him silent, passive, able only to receive what he was given. He would have moaned and bucked - both into and away from the heat of Crowley’s mouth - but he had nothing left. His very soul had flowed out of him like wine from the bottle, and Crowley had drank it like a man parched.

Aziraphale wanted to say _ it’s too much,_ but Crowley’s mouth was a tide and he was swept away, so instead he clung to the sheets like a buoy and struggled to keep his legs lifted as Crowley licked his inner folds, tongue nursing the tender, exposed flesh with the delicacy of a man who knew Aziraphale was overcome. A lazy eddy, a wash back and forth over ruined skin, and Aziraphale’s knees buckled.

“Dearest,” his voice was shot. He wanted to say _ I’ve been dragged under. I’m drowning and I’m not sure whether you’re pulling me down or taking me above. It’s too dark to tell which way is up. _Instead, “I can’t - ”

And Crowley rolled him onto his back, lounged him against pillows thrown asunder, pressed a kiss to his clammy forehead. “One more for me. I’ve got you,” he whispered, eyes so dilated Aziraphale could scarcely see the lovely yellow of their irises, and he submerged between his legs again, lifting them so they were over his freckled shoulders. His mouth and chin were _ wet _ with him, and Aziraphale felt another hot pulse as he shifted, and a trickle of liquid flowed out and down his bum. “Insatiable, you.” Crowley held his shaking thighs, fingers splayed out on blush-red skin.

Crowley dipped his head and tongued his clit, a supplication, and Aziraphale suddenly found his voice again, a panicked cry to the Heavens as his whole body contracted in pleasure-pain. Crowley’s tongue, soft and pliant, felt rough on the worked-over flesh: coral and sand and beach pebbles. 

A soft kiss on his hood, an apology, and then just a brush of the tongue to the side of his clit, gentle and deft and fleeting, and Aziraphale sighed, balmed. Again just a brush. Then another. And another. Gossamer strokes, like weightless fabric floating in water, barely there, but heady to sensitive skin. Another and another until Aziraphale was taut, legs flexed on Crowley’s back. 

“A little wound up?” Crowley smirked, effect dampened by cum-slick lips. Only a whimper in response, and Crowley sucked his labia again, tongue flirting with the interior, so close to his open slit. 

He must be garish, Aziraphale thought. Stretched wide, brought to peak too many times to know, the flood of it all eroding his dignity like smooth river rocks made glossy by Crowley, and now again on the edge and trembling for it, _ soaked _ for it, and it was as if Crowley could hear him, because barely yellow eyes met blue. “I like you wound up. I _ really _ like knowing I can do this to you.”

And without delay, Crowley bent back down and slipped his tongue into Aziraphale’s loose cunt; Aziraphale’s body yielded immediately as Crowley pushed into silken warmth, and Aziraphale jerked up voiceless and breathy, fingers locking in Crowley’s crimson hair. The emptiness abated, and Aziraphale felt full and whole and safe, _ complete_. Crowley was a salve on ravished flesh, simultaneously soothing and inflaming, and Aziraphale could only rock his hips as Crowley snaked his tongue up, inhumanly crooked, and brushed the inner hood, searching and stroking until he found the perfect spot and Aziraphale writhed beneath him, vibrating need.

Aziraphale felt the _ flow _ of his own juices, pushed out by the flicking of Crowley’s tongue, and he was dripping again, over Crowley’s tongue and mouth and chin, and the demon _ should _be disgusted by the debauchery of it all, Aziraphale thought, but Crowley only pushed his face in further, tongue seemingly intent on spilling more of him.

It was suddenly, desperately overwhelming. Aziraphale was hollow jetsam cast about by the current; Crowley had taken all his weight, taken his ability to swim against the tide. His resolve was washed away, leaving Aziraphale little more than a wrecked shell, raw and overstimulated, each lash of his tongue burning through him like boiling water, a bath in a Greek hot spring, painful and _ too much _ and yet _ right _ somehow; cathartic as he was stripped bare beneath Crowley’s mouth, and every last drop was pulled from him, every nerve battered by the sea.

“Too much, please.” But Crowley pushed his tongue firmer against the little spot, caressing it in circles as Aziraphale sobbed, begging. “I can’t, I can’t.” He was crying great, thick tears; they streaked down his face, running down his neck, joining the deluge.

Crowley slipped a hand free from under Aziraphale and squeezed his thigh, reassuring, as if to say _ I’ve got you. Hold onto me. I won’t let be swept away from me, no matter what it seems. _ Aziraphale felt him slide his palm up, rest his fingers against the soft thatch of white-blonde hair on his mound, idly stroke his curls, and then move to his centre.

Aziraphale tried to shift away; he couldn’t possibly be touched anywhere else. His body was already wrecked, tremors cresting over him with each swipe of Crowley’s devil tongue - forked now, thrusting against that fragile patch of tissue with more urgency than before. “Sssssshhhh.” More of a hiss than a hush, and Aziraphale wriggled from the puff air against his needy hole.

Crowley’s fingers found him, the pad of his thumb hovering just over his clit, not touching, just the promise of it. The promise of _ more_; he was far beyond what he could take already, sunk low into unexplored depths, and Crowley’s fingers vowed to push him further.

He keened as Crowley skimmed his clit, an ephemeral touch only, and he reeled back from the graze into Crowley’s greedy, waiting tongue. Stuck between two sensations, both replete and unrelenting, Aziraphale could only rock back and forth, jerk away from one crest and into the other, corkscrewed between two competing waves. Crowley crooked his tongue, pressed it hard into the sea-wet wall of his pussy, while rubbing down on his clit, and Aziraphale, thrashing, could almost feel Crowley’s finger and tongue touch from the outside and inside, _ engulfed_.

A storm surge, a rush of liquid, a flood of it, and he thought he might have screamed, wailed, pleaded with Crowley for mercy as the wave crescendoed around him, enveloping him. He was pulled under, the air sucked from his lungs as his body was tossed violently by the strength of it all. _ This is what drowning feels like_, he thought, _ I’ll never breathe again. _ But there was a euphoria in it, a freedom in being so completely overwhelmed and taken apart by the force of it. Immersion. Purification. Baptism.

Crowley would never let him drown, Aziraphale trusted, and when their lips met, he breathed life into Aziraphale’s wracked mouth; he held him afloat as his body was still seized with the aftershocks of the storm, and after it was over, after he could breath and the most intense of the throes had passed, it was Crowley who wrapped him in a warm, dry blanket, covering the storm-plundered ruins of his body from further touch he couldn’t possibly handle.

“You did so well, angel,” he was saying, but Aziraphale couldn’t hear him. Instead he buried his face into Crowley’s chest and pulled the soft fabric of the blanket away from his lap so it settled further from his mound. Every touch ricocheted through him, _ ripples,_ and thin arms snaked around his shoulders, gentle, so very careful not to overstimulate him. Fingers combed sweat-damp hair off his forehead. “Nap or bath?” Crowley asked, and Aziraphale wasn’t keen on the prospect of sinking into water in his current state, so he just folded closer, too spent to speak. “Just rest, angel.”

The rise and fall of Crowley’s chest was the soft rocking of a rowboat on Lake Windermere, a Venetian gondola at sunset, a Mesopotamian sailboat on the Euphrates, and Aziraphale dozed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk to me on [Tumblr](https://spunknbite.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spunknbite).


	6. Golgotha, 33 AD

_ Prompt: post-crucifixion, the two angelic beings by the empty tomb _

“Do I look suitably angelic?”

Crawley - no, Crowley - _ did_, although Aziraphale was hard-pressed to admit it. The demon had donned an uncharacteristically white robe, fastened loosely at the hip with braided gold cord, his obsidian wings unfettered in the morning air. There on a desert road leading nowhere worth going, wind rippling through his counterfeit ethereal dress, Crowley was a subject for art that couldn’t yet be created in this age, Aziraphale thought, artwork that wouldn’t be painted for some millennia until the paint was tempered just right to reflect the mix of cherry and copper and russet in the ringlets of his tempter-hair, and until paintbrushes were woven finely enough together to capture each individual barb of his silken feathers. His robe hung on him like something out of a Titan masterpiece not yet conceived: _ The Rape of Europa_, _ Tarquin and Lucretia_, _ Diana and Actaeon_, lounging heroines with cloth carelessly draped across their bodies, translucent organza that folded over hedonic hips and shoulders and thighs in a way that was too relaxed, too incidentally beautiful for the pose to be anything but meticulously staged by an artist with an amorous eye. Or perhaps something by Caravaggio: _ Rest on the Flight into Egypt_, a coy, black-winged angel twined in cascading white chiffon, a gift calling to be unwrapped.

“The wings give you away. And this all seems awfully risky, if you ask me.”

“Hell wants confirmation that He’s risen, and I can’t just wander in there with your lot mucking about. This way, if I’m spotted by a human, they’ll take me for one of yours.”

“And if Gabriel sees you, or Michael, or Heaven help you, Uriel?”

“I suspect,” Crowley paused, cosseted the alabaster of his falling sleeve with some unease; it was a snowfall in the desert, wintry-white from the Heavens in the hottest of climates, misplaced celestial imagery covering a demon’s body, an uncomfortable _ disparity _ that Aziraphale watched him fight, “Heaven won’t be much help if your lot finds me.” Another pause, and he swatted away the billowing snow clouds of fabric overwhelming his bone-thin wrists in the dry heat. “Don’t look so worried. I don’t know - I’ll run? They’re all back in Galilee now, anyway. I just need cover from the humans so people don’t chatter that there’s a demon running around the tomb, that’s all.”

“An angel with black wings and snake eyes? If Gabriel hears that he’ll know exactly - ”

“Oh, please. I know what you all look like underneath your human cloaks - you’re practically Lovecraftian.”

“Lovecraftian?”

“He’s a while away yet, you won’t like him, I’d wager.” A shrug, nonchalant, easy despite nervous hands balled up in the hems of his sleeves. “All I’m saying is that your lot gave the humans some legit PTSD before adopting their form full-time. Some black wings will go unremarked after what they’ve seen.”

The road was quiet, untraveled since the burial, and Aziraphale listened as the wind hymned through Crowley’s wings, a breeze from the Dead Sea sung through diabolical plumage.

He didn’t look true in white, Aziraphale appraised; lovely, but it was _ off _ somehow, a warped reflection in an antique mirror, and yet there was a familiarity that he couldn’t shake.

“Do you remember much from before - ” the right words, the ones least likely to _ explode _him apart in angry, laconic pieces: before you were cast down, cast out, cast aside, thrown away, expelled, demoted, demolished, “you Fell.”

Crowley almost stopped, almost tripped over his robe, a snowfall in a sand dune, and looked at Aziraphale, his mouth a hard line. “Why?”

“It’s just that it must be strange, wearing all that after so long.”

Aziraphale watched him fidget with his sleeve again, and felt a flash of _ something_, a memory long faded, like a discoloured photograph curled up at the edges, yellowed and browned and blurred, the image rendered unclear from age and weather, from time spent in unfit, lonely conditions. But the _ sense _ of it was still there: a brush of a hand against his palm, the caress of a silvery sleeve as the hand pulled away, the whisper of words lost, and divine air filtering through once-white wings as he left.

“Bits and pieces.”

_ Do you remember me? I think I remember you.  
_

“Anything specific?”

“I helped with a few nebulas.” He frowned. “And some neuroscience. Neural cells and dendrites and axons, the hippocampus, the limbic system, the electricity between them all; what makes people _ people_.” Aziraphale nodded as if he understood. “And maybe something about lilacs. Painting lilacs in the Garden? I don’t know.”

That flutter of a sleeve against his hand, cobweb-delicate and retreating away, a promise that there had been something there once, something that held them together. “Did we know each other?”

“You’d remember that better than I would, angel.”

“I suppose so.” But Aziraphale didn’t.

As they rounded the final bend in the road, they stopped shoulder-to-shoulder, wings slotted between the other’s like they’d been moulded together, created in tandem; Crowley’s wings curved upwards over them both, Aziraphale’s stretched out, enveloping, _ accommodating_.

The boulder was pushed aside, the entrance to the tomb welcoming.

“Guess I should check, just in case.”

Aziraphale watched Crowley dart inside, a white trail of fabric following him. A bride from another century, a prim cassock-dressed priest, a nurse on some terrible front, someone Aziraphale might have known _ once,_ known before Heaven was Heaven and Hell was Hell, and the cosmos was simpler. Someone Aziraphale had watched leave before, immaculate robe swelling behind him. _ Goodbye_, he might have said to that train of white fabric.

Crowley reappeared. “Empty tomb, if you want to see for yourself. Bit spooky.”

“No, I trust you.”

“Do you?” Crowley grinned. “That’s a new development.”

“Rather.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk to me on [Tumblr](https://spunknbite.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spunknbite).


	7. New York, 1928 AD

_ Prompt: Crowley in a flapper dress _

She’d found Aziraphale sitting at the bar; leaned into his shoulders from behind - well, fell into his shoulders, really - the sound of her Mary Janes skittering across the polished parquet floor echoed the _ tap tap tap _ of the cymbals on stage, resonant even amidst the clamour of the band’s horn section.

“Angel!” And she was drunk, drunker than Aziraphale had ever seen her, possibly drunker than anyone’s ever been and survived. What did the locals call it? _ Smoked. Zozzled. Ossified. Out on the roof. _ She was drunk enough that Aziraphale was more shocked by _ that_, by her graceless stumble and flushed cheeks, than actually seeing her again after decades of one-sided, desperate attempts at communication.

_ I visited. You weren’t there. You haven’t been home in years. _

She was laughing, whether at the very sight of him _ here _ of all places or just because of the alcohol poisoning her blood, Aziraphale wasn’t sure. It was uninhibited and musical, a cheerful allegro like the jazz of the club, and she straightened up only to fall into him again, laughing more, face pressed into the back of his neck. “It’sss good to sssee you, angel.” Aziraphale shivered; he could feel her breath, smell the acrid alcohol on it, and he pivoted off his stool before she could fall again, and took her by her bare arm. Such a recent trend, these bare arms, and despite living lifetimes upon lifetimes before modesty had even been imagined, the speakeasy seemed to dim around him at the feel of Crowley’s naked arm - the bony length of it peppered with tan freckles so delicate Aziraphale thought that if he were to blow across her skin, they may get caught in the air and drift away like dandelion seeds; the soft curve of her forearm tapering to a delicate wrist; an elbow that begged to be held, guided, offered support - it would have been so scandalous a thing only a few decades ago, this exposed skin. Bolts of fabric separated them at their last meeting.

“New York suits you,” he’d told her as he helped her onto the stool next to his, lifted her up at the hips as though she weighed nothing. She was more chiffon and beads and pearls than body, the sort of slight figure the decade craved, a Fitgeraldian muse made real. She leaned into his touch, and Aziraphale would have said _something _else, God only knows what, had she not swayed so.

The speakeasy was a shrine to dangerous pleasures. _ It’s as if it was made for you. Perhaps it was made by you. _ A church, no, a cathedral; a place of congregation and worship, of communion. Communicants partook in the Eucharist with poorly distilled spirits that reeked of carbonic acid; the altar was laid with dirty glasses and ashtrays. Did Crowley inlay the mosaics of this basilica with jazz music, press sharp notes into its walls and ordain them with hymns from a tenor saxophone?

It was a place that venerated the prohibited: the drinking, the gambling, the dancing, the skirts and their hems creeping higher with every passing year, and the men who pushed them higher still in intimate moments on the dance floor, men who slipped drunken hands between nyloned legs and women who let them with airy laughs.

_ That dress suits you_, he thought: the fall of it over her thighs, the way the tassels spread out over nyloned knees leaving glimpses of skin through sheer fabric, and Aziraphale made a point not to think of her bent over a bed some hours prior, pulling the silk stockings over smooth calves and up her thighs, hooking them into tightly cinched garters. The embroidered beads were stitched in geometric Art Deco patterns across her bust. Architectural. The Chrysler Building they’re engineering on Lexington Avenue, a modern Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, a wonder.

He grasped her by the elbow and remained standing next to her. “Going to catch me if I fall?” Her words were slurred, her eyes alight even behind shaded glasses.

_ Syncopation_. That’s what made jazz _ jazz_, or so Crowley would later claim over drinks on another night, in another decade entirely, in a different city. It was the unexpected parts of the rhythm, the off-beats and backbeats, oddly accented notes and chords, disturbances in the flow of the tempo, the _ surprise _mid-song when the audience anticipated the direction - verse, chorus, bridge, as it almost always went - but the music veered wildly askew, and the ending was nowhere near where the beginning projected.

Aziraphale didn’t hear the off-beats but he finished his gin. _ The Body of Christ. Amen. _

Crowley was still swaying, possibly to the music. She smiled at Aziraphale’s concern with a sort of condescending fondness that made Aziraphale hold her elbow tighter, and she signaled the bartender, who must have known her because in short seconds a whiskey, neat, was delivered.

It smelled foul. It wasn’t properly distilled, maybe wasn’t even actual whiskey - industrial grade alcohol - but Crowley downed it in one go and then idly smoothed the points of her bob, attention back to the stage.

“Bad day at the office? I’ve never seen you so - ”

But she wasn’t listening. “The band’sss good tonight.” Her snake was showing. Well past her wordy phase then, past a bottle or four in the backroom. Past reminiscing about eras forgotten to recorded history, past animated declarations and debates on subjects no one on Earth but the two of them recalled. She was quiet drunk now, calm drunk. Listen to music and fall asleep on Aziraphale’s settee drunk.

“You’re aware drinking is still legal in London? It’s not made in bathtubs there. Trifle better quality, I’d - ”

Crowley was still smiling warmly, and she placed a finger against Aziraphale’s lips to hush him, leaned close so that her lips grazed his ear, “It’sss good to sssee you, but don’t drown out the music, angel. This one has ssswing.” And Aziraphale was rendered silent, not for the music, which he supposed wasn’t as intolerable as he’d first thought, but because her pulse seemed to beat in time with the song’s tempo, and it reverberated up her arm and into the tips of Azirapbale’s fingers still on her elbow. They listened together, Crowley to the band and Aziraphale to the rhythm of Crowley’s body.

The song ended and an equally bombastic one began, and the dancers behind them rallied for another. “Not as good,” she said, almost catching Aziraphale’s eyes as her glasses slipped down her nose. “Been a long, a long, long - ” she stumbled for the word.

“Time?” Aziraphale offered, then nodded. “Yes, rather.” The decades had lurched by, fussy ruffles shortening to sleeveless dresses that fit her so elegantly. _ When did you start dressing this way? How much have I missed?  
_

Crowley seemed unfazed and she signaled for another drink. “Why New York?”

“Business. Seeing a Mrs. Rockefeller about opening up a gallery of sorts. Promising work. Thought I’d have an evening out, see what all the fuss is about.” The bartender passed her another whiskey. “And what brings you here?”

“I like it here.” She swallowed her drink.

“New York or the Cotton Club?”

A hum, then, “Both.”

“Have you been here long?”

“I just hopped over to unwind after the war.”

“The war ended ten years ago.”

“Needed to unwind a lot, I guess.” She reached across to him and loosened Aziraphale’s bow tie just a smidge, eyebrow cocked in a challenge, quirked lips dripping a ruby-lipsticked smile. “You ssshould unwind a little.”

Aziraphale dismissed the gesture. “Listen, I’m dreadfully sorry about that business in St James’s - ”

“Nah, nah, none of that.” She waved her arm and toppled into him.

“It’s just that it’s been so long and I never intended to upset - ” He’d practiced the words on the steps of Crowley’s flat, whispered them to a closed door.

“Ssstop it, it’sss done.” She was still leaning on him, close enough that Aziraphale could see under her glasses to eyes heavy with charcoal and the weight of millennia.

Aziraphale wanted to finish - _ This isn’t fraternizing. This matters, whatever it is that this even is_, but Crowley wasn’t receptive, and he wouldn’t drag her through it when she was hardly able to sit up without falling. It was enough to be in her company again. “Are you planning on staying much longer? I’m sure there’s plenty of tempting to be done in New York.” And Crowley laughed again, a little hysterical this time, as Aziraphale helped her sit back up on the stool.

“Nah, wouldn’t work. Can’t leave London for good.”

“And why’s that, my dear?”

It was as if his words absorbed the alcohol and she was suddenly cool-headed, straight-backed, words exacting, cutting. “You’re in London,” she said on the off-beat, and Aziraphale reeled from the tempo change, from the dissonant chords. A bent note played by sliding between the established ones, a jolt away from the assumed.

She started as if to signal the bartender again, but Aziraphale slipped his hand around her wrist.

“Time to sober up, I’d wager. Can’t be good for you, all this counterfeit alcohol.”

“Don’t want to hear the truth?” She was still slurring, but her face was hard and composed.

“Best to stop before you say something you’ll regret.”

“I’ll regret saying it or you’ll regret hearing it?” She’d removed her glasses in public for the first time Aziraphale could recall in centuries, and her Kohl-rimmed eyes were bloodshot.

“Both, I imagine.”

She flung herself off the stool and into the crowd, glasses back on, wobbling only a few steps in her heels before Aziraphale caught her by the arm.

“If you’re unwilling to sober up, at least let me help you home. Where are you staying?”

She pulled into him, took his hand like they were dancing, like they were the sort of people who danced together often enough they were good at it, tuned to the other’s movements and rhythm, and she said to him, “You’ll put me to bed?” Her voice was thick with whiskey and mourning. “Isss that all you want, angel?”

He could picture it, there on the dance floor holding her hand like they might be lovers, like this might be an unremarkable evening out like any other. He could envision coming home to a shared flat, unlocking the door and flipping on a familiar light switch in a hall decorated with both their things. He’d remove her coat, glide it off her shoulders and down now bare arms, and the fur lining would caress her naked skin. She would lean against him as he hung her coat in a closet, and whisper to him, “Put me to bed?” Too drunk to do little more than be scooped up and carried to _ their _bed, where he’d cushion her against velvet pillows so she would be comfortable, her short hair fanned out around her like a halo, and he’d hike up her slip and dress - God, she was so beautiful in that dress, all right angles and hard corners longing to be softened, a dress he could have bought her in this little fantasy, purchased it at some unseemly shop that reputable people would never visit, and he would have left it on their bed in a gift box for her to find and unwrap some afternoon - it would have been the first time she wore it out, and it would be a shame to take it off now when it clung to her like a second skin. So he’d shimmy the beaded fringe past her garters, and over jagged hip bones, sharp like a note, like a semitone step up on a work of sheet music. “Bed me, angel?” She’d ask as he lifted her hips up to drag her knickers down, and she’d make the sweetest sound when he’d dip his tongue into her, musical like her laugh, an elegy for lost and wasted time, an open cadence, an unfinished song, uncomposed and wanting.

Aziraphale said nothing but still held Crowley’s hand. The final notes hummed through the club and someone announced the next performers to a temporary lull in the music. Crowley pulled back and gestured wildly at the stage. “Don’t like jazz, do you? It’s because of the polyphony - you know what that even isss, angel? Ever study any mus-music-musical theory at the opera? It’sss when competing melodiesss overlap. When the Goddamn bass playsss opp-oppos - ” She slurred, shaking her head in frustration, “When the bass or sssaxophone or piano or what-the-fuck-ever playsss counterpoint to the trumpet or some other instrument, and it ssshould be a fucking messss, and it is if you’re listening to the individual melodies only, but if you can get past the fucking dissonance of it, you’d sssee it’s fucking harmonious and it all _ fits together_.” She took a step back. “You can’t listen for ssshit, angel.”

“Crowley - ”

“I’ll come back to London when I ssstop hearing the harmony.”

The band picked back up and Crowley left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Talk to me on [Tumblr](https://spunknbite.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spunknbite).


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